1908 Shattuck Avenue

1908 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA

Architect: Fernau and Hartman Architects

Contractor: Oliver and Company

Developer: Steven B. Tipping

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The copper-clad structure is directly adjacent to Tipping's first building at 1906 Shattuck, which was designed in collaboration with the same architect. Note exposed column with seismic isolator on bottom left.Credit: Tipping Structural Engineers

Close up view of one of six exposed columns with seismic isolator spliced 10 feet above groundCredit: Tipping Structural Engineers

The country's smallest seismically isolated commercial building is the result of unique synergies arising from the the fact that the developer was also the structural engineer.

Perhaps the country’s smallest base-isolated commercial building, this project is the unique result of the interdependence between creative engineering and real-estate development strategies on the part of the engineer-owner.

The structure includes a restaurant-brewery at street level and an office space designed for 25 people on the second and third floors. Two stories of wood-frame construction, with a lateral system consisting of a series of distributed wood shear walls, comprise the superstructure, which is supported by six cantilevered columns and a 14-inch-thick post-tensioned concrete podium slab.

The building’s seismic isolation plane is unique – spliced into the ground-floor columns ten feet above grade, the isolator bearings are exposed and visible; ground-floor walls cantilever from the foundation, and an isolation moat was designed and located at the second story.